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reading most recent
unemployment statistics,
alone in office

*
Today’s haiku was brought to you in part by twitter.com. More specifically, it was born of a status message on twitter.com by one of our local journalists, Monica Yant Kinney:

“reading latest unemployment #s alone in the office.”

I paraphrased her tweet a little, which is why I feel compelled to acknowledge it. It struck me as a fine use of a tactic my favorite creative writing professor used to refer to as “show and tell.” Put simply that’s the practice of not communicating through bluntly obvious statements, but giving information that illustrates of the idea you want to communicate. I don’t know if it was an intentional illustration, but I thought it brilliantly concise.

what we could not see,
what we failed to comprehend,
was everything.

in the worst of times:
no time for consequences,
no time for caution.

image: kelnishi

I am not the me,
not the me you thought I’d be,
not the one to set you free
and not the one you once believed
would stem the tides of seas.

I am more than me,
not the one you had foreseen,
but just like you I had a dream –
a delicate contingency –
depending on a “we.”

image: Untitled blue

six months still jobless
and you don’t count anymore;
such are the metrics.

photo: Daquella manera